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As TTC service gets worse, privatization looks better: Hume

Perhaps it’s an overheated imagination, but the Toronto transit system seems to be getting worse with each passing day.

It’s the exception now when that disembodied voice doesn’t come over the PA warning customers that they may experience “longer than usual travel times.”

So what else is new?

The other day, this passenger arrived 20 minutes early for an appointment when for some unknown reason the subway wasn’t delayed. It was nice to have the extra time, but there’s not a lot to do waiting to be picked up at the Lawrence West station, one of the dreariest in the city.

Weekend closures are routine these days as the TTC struggles to bring itself into the 21st century. That’s good news, but in the meantime getting around is harder than ever. Even on Sunday evenings, the Yonge line is jammed to the rafters, rush-hour style, as weary shoppers schlep homeward.

Why we let it reach this point is hard to understand, especially when we’re still talking seriously about yet another subway to nowhere, this time, Scarborough.

Have we lost our collective mind? Has Rob Ford actually managed to convince us to spend billions making a bad system worse?

A reader suggested recently that all candidates in the upcoming civic election should be required to ride the TTC. Excellent idea. The truth is that those who make decisions about transit are rarely those who use it. For the most part, they’re car-dependent suburbanites who if truth be told believe transit is for kids, seniors and the working poor, but certainly not them.

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The thing that interests them about transit is that it can be used as a way to win votes from the yokels, not that it’s a necessary part of a successful 21st-century city. To speak to them of whether the TTC needs LRT, BRT or SRT is to befuddle them with details that mean nothing.

If you ask Ford, what matters is that subways are underground and therefore out of the way. Most drivers would agree, although the reality is quite the opposite.

The TTC deserves some of the blame; it has failed to provide a compelling case for itself and is too willing to forgo technological progress in return for labour peace. The commission doesn’t run automated trains, it claims, because passengers would be nervous. So what about passengers in other cities where driverless trains are the norm?

As for ticketing, by now the best that can be said is that it’s quaint.

Metrolinx, the provincial agency nominally in charge of the transit file, has blinked so often, it has lost sight of where it’s headed.

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All of this leads one to wonder whether Big Ideas contributor Patrick Luciani isn’t right when he argues the TTC should be privatized. Sure, it would undoubtedly cost a lot more, but at this point it’s hard to imagine the system could be any worse than it is.

With the likes of Rob Ford and Karen Stintz in control, there’s little chance things will improve. The private sector, one assumes, at least understands the need to give the people what they want rather than what their betters think they need.

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Even as it is, the TTC makes more from the fare box than any other urban transit system in North America. If it were actually able to deliver decent and reliable service, who knows how much demand would increase? The price of a ride would surely go up, but as Torontonians have learned, you get what you pay for.

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